The Steam Awards 2021 Edition

https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/76561198074227279?k=7064980975256073319

https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/76561198121570366?k=2379970020959145838

I've only bought 5 games that released in 2021, and all of them from GOG.

Anyway, I voted for:

• Game of the Year - Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous
• Labor of Love - American Truck Simulator
• Outstanding Visual Style - Inscryption
• Most Innovative Gameplay - Time Loader
• Best Soundtrack - Cyberpunk 2077
• Outstanding Story-Rich Game - Gamedec

I wish I could nominate games for multiple categories, so I just picked random games for the other categories to get the badge, then removed them.

Here is my list wich includes those below:

Game of the Year - DEATHLOOP
Game of the Year VR - Car Mechanic Simulator VR
Labor of Love - Oxygen Not Included
Better with Friends - It Takes Two
Outstanding Visual Style - Forza Horizon 5
Most Innovative Gameplay - The Medium
Best game you play badly - Back 4 Blood
Best Soundtrack - Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
Outstanding Story-Rich Game - Resident Evil Village
Relax and play - The Artful Escape

https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/76561198155671783?k=15141258284290085510

Labor of Love: Binding of Isaac: Rebirth/Repentance
Outstanding Visual Style: Inscryption
Best Soundtrack: P5 Strikers
SIt Back and Relax: Unpacking

Man I wish I could vote for Metroid Bread for GOTY

Factorio for Labor of Love
The factory must grow

https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/76561198330712989?k=4418764239879075236

Game of The Year - Halo Infinite
VR Game of The Year - Lust for Darkness VR Edition
Labor of Love - Dreams of Desire Definitive Edition
Better With Friends - World War Z Aftermath
Outstanding Visual Style - Cyberpunk 2077
Most Innovative Gameplay - Resident Evil Village
Best game you play badly - Age of Empires IV
Best Soundtrack - Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
Outstanding Story-Rich Game - OUTRIDERS
Relax and play - Inscryption

i think my steam awards will be pretty on point when steam announce the winners

https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/76561198054907249?k=18305087646462675417

I haven't played 2021 releases much (or at all tbh) but I voted Crab Game for 'Better with Friends' and Townscaper for 'Sit Back and Relax'.

My picks. :)
https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/76561198036297204?k=2078350960897670557

Here are mine:
https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/76561198005980005?k=8257291618339352471
Game of The Year - Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Oh, Liara ...😘
VR Game of The Year - Yuki looks great but needs VR equipment (duh) and full body motion. After half an hour I probably would have body pain for the next few days. So, sadly will probably never happen.
Labor of Love - State of Decay. They never gave up on this game and called it a day.
Better With Friends - Aliens Fireteam Elite. Not Back for Blood because that was an uninspired Left 4 Dead clone without the fun characters, fun multiplayer, some stupid mechanics and ridiculous design decisions. Disappointing. A:FE looks much better.
Outstanding Visual Style - Sable. It just looks nice.
Most Innovative Gameplay -
"The designers of this game are at the front lines of creative experimentation, bringing a fresh perspective and brain-breaking surprises"
So, obviously Psychonauts 2. I played it a bit on the Xbox but sadly I suck at platforming, even easy ones ... But the graphics, setting and gameplay were refreshing.
Best game you suck at - Nier Replicant. Because I was already crap at Nier Automata
Best Soundtrack - Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
The music is pure Nostalgia
Outstanding Story-Rich Game - Medium
Sit back and relax - Button City. Looks cute, fun and relaxing.
Stay frosty people and have a good holiday season 🥶 🖖

https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/76561198114414631?k=10453976350598742465

my main problem, as every year, is that I don't play much "this year's" games...
I've kinda went a bit on choosing entries from the series that I know and are good, with some filler help from other's lists
GOTY - placeholder :| don't get me wrong - Arid was awesome when I played it and I'm sure it's underexposed and more people should try it but I don't think it's "GOTY material"
VR - I hat that Steam puts this category everyear as I think most people don't have VR headsets anyway so they just put random thing here. Just the way I did. But I've seen it in people's lists and it looks nice. And hey it's warhammer too bad not 40k that's always a plus
Labour of Love Steam seems to have a typo in the name for this category - That's always a difficult one because there are so many great titles that are beeing worked on years after release but there can only be one so: Terraria as it's one of the few examples of a game that you just buy once and play forever without paying a penny more! And 10 years later they are adding content to it! No microtransactions, no subscriptions, not even a DLC! Everything comes for free and you can see that people behind it are really loving their creation
Better with friends - I've put Valheim here pretty quickly even before browsing other lists despite not playing it. probably largely due to positive opinions I've heard about it and it beeing like the only game I knew was from 2021 and had coop :D but I might be changing it to It Takes Two after I've seen it in peoples lists, especially that I'm planning to play it with a friend soon so I'll have some real opinion :)
Visual Style - another difficult one. What even is an "outstanding visual style"?! Does it mean most fotorealistic visuals? Or maybe we should aim for the most abstract art style that yet still manages to convey what the games is supposed to clearly? I've seen Biomutant pop up a few time as a choice for this category and I was about to agree and choose it myself but I went with Little Nightmares instead. Why? No idea. Both are beatufil in it's own right and there are many others that show other aspects of visual beauty. For me there just cannot be one decisive winner in this category.
Innovative gameplay - Similarly to above, it's just a bit too vague to pinpoint what should it be. I was gonna pick loop hero as that's pretty interesting game but to be honest I don't think they're doing that much "innovation" rather then just clever twist on established mechanics. That's when I remembered this game I've stubled upon a while ago - Quantum League! Is this one an "innovation" I'm not sure. It might be more of a "clever twisting" but I think I like it better
Game you suck - I was really stumped with this one. I don't play games that I suck at. Gaming is supposed to be fun, pleasure, time off of the real world. I suck at real world. Thus in a game I wan't to be almighty and powerfull. Luckily I've just freed a pick from above and I've seen someone put it in this category so I guess it's difficult. Then, here it is - Loop Hero.
Soundtrack - Persona 5 Strikers. What I've said at the top - the series is a banger and even though I've not played this game, the series as a whole deserves recognition.
Story-Rich - Yakuza 6. Again choice based on the series. One of may favourite game seires in fact. Yakuza is amazing and if I wasn't so slow to play games and Yakuze games weren't so long and full of content I'd have probably been playing this one right now :D But I've got the previous entries to finish and I want to play that in order...
Sit back and Relax - Townscaper looks mighty relaxing. Even though I've not played it I'd like to relax with it some day.
Anyway here's the link to the list on steam. It might change and I might not remember to edit this post so mind that.

And a few sidenotes after browsing others' lists:
I wonder how many people put Guardians of the Galaxy for the best soundrack only for the film's soundtrack? I bet a lot and I don't think they match 1:1
I'm baffled how many people vote for Cyberpunk 2077 in visual style. I mean yeah, it's cyberpunk and cyberpunk is awesome but I don't think that Cyberpunk 2077 is the best realisation of the style. Don't get me wrong, the game looks great, but to me it feels like too much of safe, generic "triple a'ness".
I'm also surprised how many people put Cyberpunk in their GOTY after all the flak the game got after release, but maybe it improved and people judge it for what it actually is right now yeah, that's not something I'd expect from "people on the internet"

Didn't play recent games, but i tried to carefully choose deserving nominees.
If that list can provide ideas, here it is :
https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/76561197970964921?k=4989997400866154460

• Game of The Year - Resident Evil Village Had to pick one of the big hits of the year
• VR Game of The Year - IRON REBELLION Seems like a straightshooter for the Mecha genre revival
• Labor of Love - No Man's Sky I spat on HelloGames for the catastrophic release, but they seems to have come a long way to fix it
• Better With Friends - Hell Let Loose
• Outstanding Visual Style - EVERSPACE 2 Space <3
• Most Innovative Gameplay - Potion Craft Alchemist Simulator Not easy to pick one, so this one will do
• Best game you play badly - Ziggurat 2 I suck at roguelites
• Best Soundtrack - Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Mötley Crüe playing during the trailer, hell yeah
• Outstanding Story-Rich Game - Psychonauts 2/ Never disappointed with a DoubleFine story
• Relax and play - Escape Simulator Just looks great for chillin'

mine, I didn't play most of them though :3
https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/76561198083932377?k=17804592132045901568

LOL Apparently we Steam users don't like change.
That's seems to be the only way to explain how this happened.
As far as I remember this is the first time Valve adds an alternative version (that doesn't grant XP) of an existing badge so there must have been quite an uproar the new badge doesn't match the design of the old Nomination Committee badges.

Full disclosure: I didn't like the new design neither but I most certainly didn't contact Steam Support about it to give them a piece of my mind.

So brace yourself for some inconsequential change fellow hoarders and TC enthusiasts because while giving in to our demands this time Valve at the same time announces they might actually change the badge next year.

Anyway... now that the classic design is back I can finally do this!
I've heard once you have all six different Gobots they can merge into Maximus Prime Gobot, right? 😄

View attached image.